I’m out of here

German centre-right MEP Hans-Gert Pöttering has announced that he will not stand for re-election to the European Parliament next May.

Even though Pöttering is, at 67, far from being the oldest sitting MEP, his departure will amount to a generational shift, because Pöttering is the last of the class of 1979 – the first cohort of MEPs directly elected in 1979. Before then MEPs had been appointed. Pöttering was leader of the centre-right European People’s Party group in the Parliament between 1999 and 2007 and its president between January 2007 and June 2009.

When asked about who might take his place in the Parliament, Pöttering said this was not for him to decide. But just days later, his 29-year-old son, Benedict, was nominated by a local CDU chapter in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, as a candidate for the European Parliament elections.

But the younger Pöttering is not yet guaranteed a safe place on Lower Saxony’s party list. Indeed, David McAllister, who was prime minister of Lower Saxony until February, might yet provide some competition. He is expected to stand for a seat in the Bundestag, the lower house of the fed

eral parliament, in September, but if he fails might bid to enter the European Parliament.